Tanuki top four

Dear uncle Kenny,

As I am sure you know, I am a tanuki of refinement and culture, one to whom the better things in life are instantly apparent. Since I have been here I have been picking out the finer aspects of British culture and most recently I have managed an interior design top four. Enjoy!

Number 4 - Something old, something new


The first piece reportedly cost thousands in design fees from an avant-gard architect of some renown. As you can see, he really earnt his thousands here. Thank god someone had the balls to do this.

Number 3 - decorative tiling


Now, I know that you are going to tell me that all tiling is decorative, but what the artist has done here is to completely separate form from function. It took me a long while to get my head around the concept but it is a masterpiece. The lack of grouting round the tiles and sealant round the bath have nullified the function while the obvious nastiness of the tiles themselves have sneered at the bathroom beauty myth. It has to be art of th highest order. It couldn't be anything else.

Number 2 - the window ensemble



The first and second spots this time were hotly-contested indeed! There was literally nothing between these last two objects. The window ensemble carries on in the vein seen above: It growls at both functionality and presentability. It makes a bold statement about purpose and existence. The fully-blocked window, the curtain rail which extends over only half of the window, the curtain shading the bare wall. There is no why, this work just is.

Number 1 - the dark lamp


When I saw this, the first thing I thought, after my initial daze, was, "my god, it's beautiful!" If da Vinci had had electricity and energy-saving light bulbs to hand he probably would have made this. Hundreds of years after he was taken from us, someone had the nous to carry on the fight. Bravo!

I hope you enjoyed my top four!

Yours sincerely,

Tanuki Dave

Tanuki chuckles

Dear uncle Kenny,

You'll never guess what I learnt last night! We were talking about different languages last night and we were going into how to say "so-so" in many languages. It were a proper highbrow conversation.

Anyway, I had a bit of a double take when someone mentioned the Greek. In Greek it is "echi-kechi". As you know, "echi" means horny and "kechi" means tight-fisted:

"Hey!"
"How are you?"
"Not bad. You?"
"Ah, horny and tight-fisted, you know? Swings and roundabouts."

As you can see, I'm going to have no problem filling those long winter nights now....

Yours faithfully,

Tanuki Dave

Tanuki Sunrise

Dear uncle Yoriki,

I hope that the kids are treating you well and you are not being afflicted by the Head and deputy head too much.

I've got a bit of a problem and I thought that you might be able to help. I know that you are proud of Japan and I am as well. I've heard Japan called "the land of the rising sun" a number of times and I hadn't given it any thought whatsoever. I hadn't until this week anyway. Please take a look at the photo I've enclosed. I'm not sure, but I think it strongly suggests that the sun rises in other countries too.

Yours hopefully,

Tanuki Dave

Tanuki Truth

Dear uncle Kenny,

I hope your various business enterprises are blooming in my absence.

Here is something I thought you might be interested in. I was sat on my habitual vantage point on the window ledge in the dining room when I happened to glance out of the window. The sunrise was glorious but that wasn't what held my eye. There had been a heavy frost and the sheep were all huddled in the middle of the field. Some movement caught my eye.

A fox was running round the the outside of the group of sheep. I had initially thought that it was a tanuki, but the colours were all wrong. Who ever heard of a ginger tanuki? Anyway, the situation struck me as odd because the sheep weren't running away and the fox wasn't attacking. The sheep and fox were like children who had stumbled in on their parents doing something rude: They had no idea what to do.

Eventually the fox tried to take the initiative but only managed a quick nibble of wool before the owner awoke, looked over it's shoulder with a bored look and said, quite clearly and with a bored lilt to it's voice, "fuck off, will you?"

"Right," said the fox uncertainly, "I'll just toddle along, shall I? Sorry to have bothered you." It then had a disgruntled sniff at a couple of magpies and then exited stage right. The last thing I saw, the fox was runnig home with it's tail between it's legs.

I'm not quite sure about what this means. Did I dream it or is there something wrong with the foxes here? I suppose that it is all one with the topsy-turvy nature of life here anyway. The kids are exactly the same. They swear at the adults and the adults just take it and move on. Perhaps one day the foxes will attack the sheep and the adults will knock seven bales of shit out of the kids, but until then I'll continue to be deeply uneasy.

Yours sincerely,

Tanuki Dave

PS - It wasn't a dream. It DID happen!

Tanuki Slander

Dear uncle Yoriki,

I hope you are getting on OK. I'm very sorry to say that things here are not going so well... I've been slandered by my pet human male. I'll let you read first and then let you decide for yourself.

Tanuki Dave becomes a superhero

One day Tanuki Dave was sitting at home reading the newspaper because he was bored. He was scanning the classified adverts when one caught his eye. “Why not become a crime-fighter?”

He phoned for extra details and arranged an interview. In the interview he learnt that anyone could be a super-hero. He decided to do it. He was told that he needed to do some shopping.

First he went to the clothes shop to buy some clothes. He liked jeans but he needed lycra. He bought a brown and red jumpsuit and a pair of pumps. After that he went to the gun shop to buy some weapons. He bought a gun for shooting bad guys, a knife for stabbing them and a net for catching them. He wasn’t happy because he only wanted to pay £100. In fact, he spent £150.

The last thing he did was to go to college. He read a book called “an idiots guide to fighting crime.” He learnt how to sing because he needed a theme tune. He spoke to some other students to get some ideas for his project. Lastly, he learnt French so that he could work in France if he wanted.

His final exam is next week. He is very worried.

This is what he is telling all of his students at school. I'm quite frankly gob-smacked. The most telling lie was the one about the lycra jumpsuit and the pumps. As if I would ever buy pumps!

Apparently there was a reading comprehension and a key word analysis, but I didn't manage to lay hands on these so I don't know if the perfidity goes any further.

I'll be seeking legal advice as soon as possible, but I'd like your opinion before I proceed as I know you are an expert on rodent law (anyone who would defame a rodent must face charges in the law of that species) and unfortunately there is no actual law specifically for Tanuki. As far as I am aware I'm the only one in the country. I'm certainly the only one on the British segment of the blogsphere.

Please help!

Yours faithfully,

Tanuki Dave

Tanuki Tours - Huddersfield

Dear uncle Yoriki,

I hope you are well and enjoying being engaged. I didn't meet your spouse-to-be before I left, though I hear that one of my pet humans was there when the wedding bells first began to tinkle. I can't imagine a less romantic person that my male human, so you did very well to keep him away. Perhaps you will come over to England one day and I'll be able to show you both around.

I found an interesting place the other day. It was my first day out of captivity and we went to West Yorkshire. I had to sneak into a rucksack to be able to go. At first I was a little apprehensive about it all. We were supposed to be going by bus, and my humans always spend their time complaining about being on buses. I can definitely see their point about the kids listening to the music on there. The music was shocking, but this is hardly a surprise. That anyone would choose to listen to that music near my male human shows that their judgment was impaired beyond the simple matter of poor tunes exacerbated by a tinny speaker. I've never seen anything like it.


The scenery on the way over the hills was nice, though. I heard one of the humans mention that we were passing the Pennine Way and that it was a famous footpath. I wander if it is like the Tokaido in Shiga, where I am from. That is an old road that Samurai used to use to take rotten beans to Tokyo. Presumably England had Samurai, too. I decided to keep my eyes open for Samurai.

We had a wander round a cold, wet, Northern city and consoled ourselves with a pint at a local pub. I don't know if you have been to England, or if you know what a pub is, uncle Yoriki. From what I can tell, it is a place where people with short hair go to drink beer and shout. We went to another on the way home, and that one had little models of old-fashioned cars in it and proportionally fewer people shouting. As none of them had Chonmage I had to assume that none of them were Samurai.



As days out go it was nothing to write home about. Oh, hang on, it looks like it was something to write home about because I just did! How funny am I? Anyway, I'll write again when I have something more to tell you. I must admit that I am finding it all rather puzzling, though.



Yours sincerely,

Tanuki Dave

Tanuki Tantrum

Dear uncle Kenny,

I hope you are well and that your kimono business is going well. Say hello to everyone from me.

First of all I'd like to apologise for not writing sooner. First of all I was trapped in a box with a load of books and cameras, then I was left in the garden with no net access! After that I was finally brought inside and had the slugs scraped out of my bottom and left with a nice view on the window-ledge. Since then it was all a problem of getting my humans signed-up with broadband and I'm sure you know how that one goes.

So all-in-all, not a good start. I'm most unhappy with my pet humans for having left me outside for so long and for having left me out of touch. If I can get together enough for the EMS fare I'll be home like a shot.

Anyway, this was just a quick email to let you know that I am OK, apart from feeling a little bit left out.

Your loving Tanuki,

Dave